Category: Poems from Poems

I just happened to hear a snatch of a Radio 4 programme where Gyles Brandreth was explaining how learning poems by heart was a good work-out for the brain. I thought, “Yes, I could do that,” and began by memorising a Shakespeare sonnet. But then I thought that writing a sonnet instead would surely be … Continue reading “1. How I came to write my poems from poems”

A central focus in my poems is the way many attitudes have, inevitably, changed over the centuries. For example, I was moved by the poignant realisation that so many of the older poets saw Nature as an eternal power, as in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ God’s Grandeur: “Nature is never spent …. There lie the dearest, … Continue reading “2. Changing attitudes: nature”

The vivid immediacy of a divine presence is so prevalent in seventeenth century metaphysical poetry. John Donne’s hope of redemption and terror of damnation course through his religious sonnets. George Herbert’s unquestioning closeness to his creator is powerful, whether in a spirit of rebellion (The Collar) or of utter humility and trust (Love). I never … Continue reading “3. Changing attitudes: faith”

Matthew Arnold’s sublime poem Dover Beach shows his age’s fear at the growing loss of faith, so troubling to many Victorians when long-held certainties about creation were being challenged. Arnold uses the metaphor of “The Sea of Faith”, once a calm, moonlit sea “at the full” but now ebbing inexorably away – his final image … Continue reading “4. Changing attitudes: faith and climate change”

Amidst so many shifting certainties and different priorities, there are always, of course, the eternal themes such as love, parting, youth and age which poets over the centuries have portrayed. An example of this is my take on Seamus Heaney’s Blackberry Picking. Here, I draw on my own early childhood memories when my beloved father … Continue reading “5. Unchanging truths: growing up”